Day 65 | Lesson 3 (User Experience)

Lesson 3 for User Experience Fundamentals for Web Designdealt with setting up the navigation menu for your website. This is an important element to the user experience because visitors need to be able to “navigate” their way through your site and not get lost.

First is figuring out the location of navigation menu, which could be located on a single bar at the top or in a side bar on the left side.

In some cases you may even have cause to incorporate both in your website:

Something to keep in mind, if your navigation menu has drop-down menus, is to make sure that it has good coding. Ones that have poor coding could cause frustration when the drop-down menus disappear when the cursor scrolls off the path.

The example on the left is what happens when the mouse temporarily leaves the sub-menu area. Well-coded menu controls, like on the right, will have a sufficient lag built in that they don’t disappear during this time.

Our former website for our local newspaper was a good example of poorly coded sub-menus. Sub-menus would constantly disappear requiring you start over at the top to try and get to your destination.

Another frustration users can meet is industry jargon that they’re not familiar with. Make sure that menus are clearly labeled, so that visitors can find what they want.

A visitor who is constantly getting lost is likely to leave the site due to frustration. They want information fast and easy.